Cleaning companies minimum wage and agency workers
Many
office cleaning companies
and
cleaning companies are
already struggling, clients are expecting more and more
for less, cleaners want and demand higher pay, times are
uncertain, one thing that is certain is the increase to
national minimum wage from this month - details below;
In October, a couple of changes to employment law will
come into force, effecting businesses of all sizes
across the county. Although these changes could have a
big impact on your employees, your responsibilities are
minimal.
But what do the changes mean for your
business and what action do you need to take?
• Firstly, the national minimum wage rates will
increase on October 1 2011.
This means you’ll
have to pay at least:
o £6.08 per hour for
workers aged 21 or more.
o £4.98 per hour for workers
aged 18-20.
o £3.68 per hour for workers aged 16-17.
You’ll also need to pay any apprentices who are
under the age of 19 at least £2.60 per hour, as well as
those aged 19 and over who are in the first year of
their apprenticeship.
If you provide any workers
with accommodation, the accommodation offset will be
increased to a maximum of £4.73 per day.
Best
practise would be to update all of your employees'
contracts with the new rate of pay to ensure clarity of
information, in case of dispute. This could be done
through an amendment letter stating the new rate and
highlighting that ‘all other terms and conditions of
employment remain the same.’
Failure to pay the
minimum rate is a criminal offence.
• The second
change to come into effect is the Agency Workers
Regulations 2010.
These regulations give agency
temps a right to the same basic working and employment
conditions as they would have had if they had been
directly employed by the hirer to do the same job.
An agency temp will have to work for a qualifying
period of 12 weeks, in the same role, with the same
hirer, before they are entitled to equal treatment.
Occupational social security schemes, such as
company pension schemes and occupational sick pay, are
not included in basic working and employment conditions.
What’s more, all agency temps will be entitled to
certain rights from the first day of an assignment,
including access to canteens, childcare facilities, car
parking and the right to be notified of permanent
vacancies.
Now you have this information, you’re
ahead of the game. Make sure that you start planning now
to ensure you can make these changes to your business in
plenty of time.
In terms of agency workers, it
will be the resourcing agencies that have the bulk of
the extra work, but it’s a good idea to get in touch
with them now to check you are both organised ahead of 1
October.
See what out clients have
to say about us in out office cleaning testimonial page
"we chose ICS because we liked
their green cleaning
ethos plus we were very impressed with their
price"
Julie Kelly - Sony TV
more testimonials
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